[x_custom_headline type=”left” level=”h4″ looks_like=”h4″]No situation is hopeless, unless you have already given up. Often failure results from a refusal to take action more than it does from the challenges of life themselves. [/x_custom_headline]
Everyone deals with pressures and circumstances that come against their lives. But some people are successful against those difficult times while other fold up and are defeated by them. So then it is really a matter of our own choosing as to whether or not we win or lose in life. And I hope that as you read this today you will be encouraged to choose winning over losing.
There is a powerful story in the Bible about a time when the king of Syria and his army encircled Samaria, essentially trapping everyone inside. After a period of time, food supplies began to run low, because they had eaten everything there was available to eat. And now the people had become desperate to eat something, anything, because their hunger was so great.
Just look at the desperation these people were facing.
[x_blockquote cite=”2 Kings 6:25-30 NASU” type=”left”]“25 There was a great famine in Samaria; and behold, they besieged it, until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver. 26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!” 27 He said, “If the Lord does not help you, from where shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the wine press?” 28 And the king said to her, “What is the matter with you?” And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ 29 “So we boiled my son and ate him; and I said to her on the next day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.” 30 When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes — now he was passing by on the wall — and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath on his body.”[/x_blockquote]
Now maybe you have had some really hard times before, and even been extremely hungry, but I hope you have never been in such a bad case as these people were, as they were reduced to eating donkey’s heads and bird poop. And what’s worse, the two women mentioned in the story above even resorted to cannibalizing their own children. It is difficult to even imagine this kind of desperation.
But there came a day when the man of God stood up and proclaimed the Word of the Lord about the situation. In fact, Elisha actually prophesied that within twenty-four hours there would come such a breakthrough in their situation that there would be fresh bread for sale again in the streets of Samaria (2 Kings 7:1).
And who would God use to accomplish this breakthrough? Perhaps the least likely people to be used to overcome this blockade by the Syrians were four lepers who were not only dying of this horrible disease, but also starving themselves just outside of the city of Samaria.
“Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate; and they said to one another, “Why do we sit here until we die?” 2 Kings 7:3 NASU
Now this is a question that we should be asking ourselves. Why are we just sitting here waiting to die, when we could get up and make a move towards the enemy’s camp?
The reason that question changed these men’s situation is because it changed their response to their situation. They had no idea at the time they were sitting there that they were destined for victory.
However, just like these four lepers, if we would rise up from the place of apparent defeat and begin moving out in faith, it will give God something to work with in our lives in the same way that it did for these men.
When these men rose up and began moving, the Bible says that the Lord made the Syrians hear the sound of a great army coming out against them (see 2 Kings 7:6). And so the Syrians in sudden panic ran for their lives, and in the process they left all of their food, clothes, wealth, donkeys, horses and much more, behind. And just exactly like the prophet of God had spoken, the wicked ordeal the Samarians were facing was overturned in twenty-four hours. But this occurred because four lepers decided to not just sit in defeat and despair, but instead they rose up and gave the Lord something to work with.
Here was a no-win situation that God turned into a triumph. In fact, if we will have courage to rise up and step forward, victory is inevitable in our lives too.
So no matter how difficult your current circumstances may be, my advice to you is: Don’t just sit there.
